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Black Friday

What Does it Mean For You?

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving.  It’s the traditional start of the official Christmas shopping season in the USA.  On this day, stores have some of their best sales of the year.  Massive discounts on certain items, loss leaders to get you in the door, lots and lots of rebates.  This is the day you’ve heard about on the news when people line up outside stores in lawn chairs at 2 AM just to be one of the first ones inside.

To quote Wikipedia:

“The “black” in the name comes from the standard accounting practice of using red ink to denote negative values (i.e., losses) and black ink to denote positive values (profits).  Black Friday is the day when retailers traditionally get back “in the black” after operating “in the red” for the previous months.”

If you are planning to sell to traditional retailers, your product must be on their shelves well before US Thanksgiving.

A typical timeline, working backwards (all latest dates):

  • US Thanksgiving –  Your goods are on the store shelf ready to go
  • November 1st –  Goods are moving out of your location to retailers
  • October 1st –  Latest that goods should be arriving at your location to be organized to ship out to retailers
  • September 15th –  Goods moving through Customs, and delivery arrangements being made to your location.
  • August 1st –  Production shipping out from China
  • June 1st –  Production Sample approved and sewing starting
  • May 1st –  Production Starts!  Quantity provided, as well as production deposit

So if you are thinking about placing a production order to arrive for the Christmas season, you will want to get going as early as possible.  As we get closer to Black Friday (the day after American Thanksgiving), the shipping lanes slow down from congestion, and delivery can be delayed.  We will do what we can to get your orders in early, but you can help by placing production orders as soon as possible.

 Guarantee!

Shipments by ocean and ground are not guaranteed – so ask your project manager about air shipping some goods in, and the rest can come in by ocean.  Air shipments arranged on time are guaranteed for delivery.

Don’t Panic!

First of all, we can speed things up a little bit without increasing your costs.  But to do this we do need your help.  For smaller orders (under 6,000 pieces) we need you to be flexible with material colors and patterns.  We never want you to accept a toy that you don’t like, but searching for that ‘perfect color‘ adds time on to your project.

Second.  Good news…

Christmas comes every year!  I know how important it is to you to get your toys out this year, but if you can think in terms of the next few years that can take the pressure off of you.  Look at selling this year for Christmas as ‘practice’ and then fine tune your skills over the next seven to eight months when you will be all set for next Christmas.  It is an exciting process that shifts your mindset from “NOW!!!” to growing your skills, your toy line, and your sales over time.